BATTLING THE ODDS

Western Bureau:

EXCEPT FOR former Petersfield High School outstanding quarter-miler Antonio Watson, who won gold at the 2017 World Youth Championship in Kenya; and former Mount Alvernia sprinter Kemba Nelson, who was part of Jamaica’s female 4x100m team which copped silver at the 2022 IAAF World Championship in the United States, the track and field talent pool in western Jamaica is speedily drying up.

Naturally, this must be a worrying concern, as this is the region that produced iconic world-beaters such as track and field legends Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, and Merlene Ottey, who collectively won a total of 64 individual medals for Jamaica, between the Olympic Games and the IAAF World Championship (now World Athletics Championship).

Athletics is not the only sporting discipline that is losing its lustre, as the situation is the same with football and cricket, which once dominated the sporting landscape in the region.

In football, no new quality talent has emerged to replicate the success of the likes of Jamaica’s 1998 FIFA World Cup hero Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore, and 1991 Shell Caribbean Cup MVP Paul ‘Tegat’ Davis; while, in cricket, except for current West Indies vice-captain Jermaine Blackwood, the region’s cricket is in a slumber.

While several factors, including youngsters at the high-school level changing their focus from sports to unscrupulous activities, could be advanced, the underutilisation of the region’s sporting facilities, especially multimillion-dollar structures like the Trelawny Multi-Purpose Stadium, the St James-based Montego Bay Sports Complex, and the Frome Sports Ground in Westmoreland, merits much of the blame.

MONTEGO BAY STADIUM

The Montego Bay Stadium, which is the only sporting facility outside of Kingston and St Catherine with a synthetic 400-metre running track, is fast becoming a white elephant, as the track for the past five years, the 43-year-old Milo Western Relays and the annual Western Primary School Athletics Championship, has had to be shifted out of the region, robbing the region’s athletes of the opportunity to showcase their talent in their own backyard.

At the recent launch of the 2023 Milo Western Relays, which was staged at G.C. Foster College of Physical Education and Sport in St Catherine, Green Island High School athlete Rlandi Wright summed up the disappointment of the west, which is no longer enjoying the expensive J$1.2 billion gift that the Venezuelan government gave to Montego Bay in 2010 to develop, expose and promote sporting talent from western Jamaica.

“It is very sad that had to be moved to the east (G.C. Foster College). It is a one-time opportunity that the parents, grandparents, and family members get to see their child performing, but moving it makes it limiting to do so. My parents won’t be able to see and watch my races and it’s kind of sad for me,” said Wright.

The situation at the Trelawny Stadium, built at a cost of US$30 million as a legacy spin-off project from the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, which the Caribbean hosted, is a monumental embarrassment. While none of the six high schools in the parish is engaged in the ongoing ISSA Headley Cup Schoolboy Cricket Competition, the stadium, which former West Indies batting great Brian Lara described as ideal for Test cricket, is underutilised.

“I would be only too happy to see the stadium being used for school cricket, because that is where we [are] going to get the talent from to build cricket in this parish,” said Chester Anderson, president of the Trelawny Cricket Association.

“It is a beautiful facility that can host cricket at all levels, and I would be really happy to see it being used for schoolboy cricket.

“If we could get more of our youngsters playing cricket, I strongly believe that we will have fewer boys turning to the gun and lottery scamming. We need to do all we can to encourage our boys to get into sports. They could make a lucrative career out of it,” added Anderson.

“And that would include making the various sporting facilities available for their development.”

While the Frome Sports Ground in Westmoreland is a private property, its owners, the Frome Sugar Estate, have always made it available, free of charge, to the sporting bodies in the parish. Over the years, millions of dollars have been used on the upkeep and upgrade of the facility, which was extensively used for cricket and football and had easily the best 400-metre grass running track in western Jamaica.

However, with sports on the decline in the parish, as youngsters continue to abandon sports for illicit get-rich-quick schemes, the facility is no longer used with the regularity of the past. In fact, the surroundings are more like a wilderness than the facility, which was erecting new spectator stands and once installed temporary floodlights in the 1990s.

President of the Westmoreland Football Association, Everton Tomlinson, who was instrumental in the development of the Llandilo Sports Complex in Savanna-la-Mar, which is now the leading football facility in that parish, is one administrator who has been batting for better facilities in the parish over the years.

“Where there is no improvement in the physical infrastructure, it would be unwise to demand quality football from our players,” Tomlinson once told The Sunday Gleaner.

As sports lovers in the west continue to bemoan the fact that three of the region’s premier sporting facilities, which collectively cost billions of dollars, are basically going to waste, to the detriment of youngsters, the pertinent question must be, will Watson and Nelson be the last notable examples of what the region can produce, bearing in mind it was once the envy of others.